


Even to the Edge

by hope_in_the_dark



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (this is war y'all there's a lot of mentions of violence but nothing too graphic), Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Blood, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Non-Graphic Violence, One Shot, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-War, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Queer Guardian Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens), Queer History, Smoking, War, World War I, they're married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25828876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hope_in_the_dark/pseuds/hope_in_the_dark
Summary: The Battle of Passchendaele isn't at all what Ezra was expecting. It's far worse than he could have imagined in more ways than he can count, and all he can think about is survival. And then he meets a man who changes (and saves) his life, and there is suddenly something that he cares about losing.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 48
Kudos: 104





	Even to the Edge

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, lovelies! 
> 
> I have taken a break from my other WIPs for the moment to bring you this long oneshot because I really needed the catharsis of writing hurt/comfort. Writing softness is all well and good, but I'm a bit dark and twisty and can't stay away from angst for too long. Rest assured, though, this does have a happy ending - I can't cause the Ineffable Fellas pain and not fix it! 
> 
> Also, while this is a historical AU that I did a pretty insane amount of research for, I am aware that there are circumstances here that would not probably have been the case. I've decided that I'm allowed to mess with history, though, so I just wanted you to know that I know. 
> 
> Warnings for this fic are in the tags (the one that isn't there is language, which there is a decent amount of), so please be mindful of them! Please let me know if I have missed any tags that I need to add!
> 
> Title comes from Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare. 
> 
> Poems quoted in part or in full are the following: [Darkness](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43825/darkness-56d222aeeee1b) by Lord Byron, [Jenny Kiss'd Me](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50495/jenny-kissd-me) by Leigh Hunt, and Sonnets [20](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50425/sonnet-20-a-womans-face-with-natures-own-hand-painted) and [116](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45106/sonnet-116-let-me-not-to-the-marriage-of-true-minds) by William Shakespeare. (Note: the subject of Sonnet 20 is widely believed to have been a man, and I definitely count it among my favorite pieces of queer poetry.)

_Passchendaele, Belgium_

_August, 1917_

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. No one had said that it would be like this. They’d spoken of glory and victory and valor, but Ezra had yet to see anything that resembled that. There wasn’t, insofar as Ezra could tell, anything here but pain and death and cowardice. This war had taken all of those things and wrapped them up, tied them neatly with a bow, and presented them as a gift to men who quickly learned that the only thing they cared about was survival. They didn’t even want to _live,_ not when it came down to it. Living was for later, for the ones who made it out. Surviving came first, and it became the prerequisite for living. 

Ezra’s boots were half-sunk into the mud. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a step and found solid ground beneath his feet. Soldiers who looked like he did milled around him, talking quietly about home and _not_ talking about the mud and dirt and blood staining their uniforms and coating their skin. In the dimming light of dusk, Ezra could see their eyes. Cold, colder than they should be. Hollow, like he felt. Soulless. 

With a sigh, Ezra rested his rifle against his shoulder and leaned back against the sandbags. He thought about shutting his eyes, but he hesitated. Sleep was a rare thing, a cryptid creature seen only in flashes and long moments. Everyone talked about it, of course, but it was mentioned in hushed whispers and toted like a myth. And when sleep did come upon the bone-tired men, it was unrecognizable to them. There were no dreams that weren’t nightmares, no hours of uninterrupted blissful unconsciousness. 

Ezra hated sleeping here. He avoided it when he could. _They_ were always there, the friends he’d lost. He’d seen them die once already, had heard their screams in real time. He had no desire to experience it again. 

So he tilted his head back and tried to look at the sky, searching for any sliver of star-studded night that wasn’t hidden behind clouds and smoke. 

He passed a few minutes in this way before the tell-tale sound of boots squelching through the mud drew his attention away. Someone was walking toward him, head and shoulders bowed down. The trench wasn’t as deep here as it was in other sections, and even Ezra in all of his five-and-a-half feet had to keep his head down when he stood. 

“Smoke, Ez?” Ted slid down the mud-made wall, a pristine white cigarette pinched between his filthy fingers. He gestured at Ezra with it, and Ezra accepted it gratefully. 

“Thank you.” 

“You got a light?” 

Ezra made an affirmative noise as he pulled his lighter out of his pocket and flicked it open. He lit Ted’s cigarette first (it was what passed for good manners out here. It was the _only_ thing that counted as manners, really, or at least the only thing anyone else cared about) before sticking his own between his lips and watching the flame catch the paper. 

The lighter closed with a sharp click, and two thin curls of white smoke curled toward the sky. 

“New supplier?” Ezra asked conversationally. John had always been the one he and Ted had gone to for extra smokes. He got them sent in from somewhere even though he wasn’t a smoker himself (‘Not my vice,’ he’d once told Ezra), and he traded them for booze and chocolate. John had been one of the only men who did anything with a smile, and his eyes hadn’t been quite as hollow or cold as nearly everyone else’s. 

He’d been making a trade yesterday with a man Ezra didn’t know, swapping cigs for a tiny bottle of whiskey, when the shell had hit. Ezra had watched the medics carry his body away, had seen the smile that was eternally frozen on his face. 

If Ezra slept, if he dared to close his eyes, he knew that he’d see that smile. 

Next to him, Ted took a long drag from his cigarette and said, “Yeah. They call ‘im the Crow.” 

“Why?” 

“Collects stuff,” Ted said with a ghost of a smile. “Nothin’ shiny, ‘course. Just… the stuff that he’s got ‘s hard to come by.” 

Ezra pursed his lips and blew a stream of smoke into the air. He watched it dissipate and stuck the burning thing back between his lips again, letting it rest there. Waiting for it to burn away. It was an idle thing, smoking, and it was something that Ezra had never done back in London. He’d thought it pointless, had turned up his nose and acted like he was above such things. What was the point in it when there were books to read, things to study, stories to write? 

But in Passchendaele, in any of the trenches that marred the Continent, there was nothing to study but death and the art of dying. There were no stories to write, because stories were only passed on with voices. And the only books to be found were the ones that boys like Ezra had managed to bring along. Most of them had taken a fall into the mud and been sucked into it, and the ones that remained were waterlogged from the rain. 

So Ezra smoked, because it felt like something. 

“You’ll have to introduce me to this Crow of yours,” Ezra said. 

Ted gave him a lopsided grin, a shadow of the real thing. “Chyeah. Tomorrow. Can’t have ya making me your errand boy. Get your own smokes.” 

With a spectral smile of his own, Ezra tilted his face once more toward the sky. Maybe tonight, there would be stars. 

*********

The Crow was a dark-haired beanpole of a Canadian. His posture was a permanent slouch, and he moved like water. He had a sharp smile and a short bark of a laugh, and Ezra liked him immediately. 

Ezra wasn’t _supposed_ to like men in the way that he liked them. He wasn’t supposed to forget to breathe at the sight of a well-muscled torso or have the desire to run his hands through a man’s curly hair. He was supposed to come home from the war and find a wife, settle down with her in a little house outside of the city, have a couple of kids and debate the merits of getting a dog. But because Ezra had never wanted the wife, because he preferred the idea of a husband, the rest of the post-war dream meant nothing to him. 

This didn’t stop his heart from flipping backwards in his chest when the Crow greeted him with a nod and smile. 

“Teddy’s friend, aren’t you?” 

_Good Lord,_ Ezra thought as he said, “Yes. Ezra.” _His voice. I didn’t know I could want to kiss a man because of his voice._

“Right,” the Crow said in his flat, beautiful accent, “what can I do for you, Ezra?” 

“What do you have?” 

The Crow got to his feet in one flowing movement and opened the lid of the trunk he’d been sitting on. He gestured to it with a too-clean hand (where was the mud? It was like it didn’t dare to touch him. Ezra felt filthy by comparison), and Ezra’s eyes went wide. 

“Where did you—” Ezra started, but the Crow silenced him with a cough. 

“If I answered that, what would you need me for?” 

“Right.” 

“So,” the Crow said smoothly, suddenly taking on the air of a practiced salesman. “I have cigarettes, of course. Some rations of dried tobacco, too, if you’re a pipe man. And then there’s the liquor — bit of vodka, although that’s the upper end of what I’ve got, a decent amount of whiskey, and about half a mickey of gin.” The Crow paused, studying Ezra’s face for any sign of interest. “If food’s what you’re after, I’m running a bit short today. Got some extra rations of the usual stuff, and I can do chocolate by the half-bar. If it’s clothes you need, I’ve got dry socks and a couple pairs of knitted glov—” 

Ezra reached out and caught the Crow’s arm. “Did you say you have dry socks?” 

“I did.” 

“What do you want for a pair?” 

The Crow shrugged. “What do you have?” 

“Pencils,” Ezra said, unsnapping one of the pouches on his coat. “Paper.” 

“How much of each?” 

“Three pencils.” Ezra had found a trench pen in the pocket of a fallen friend and had taken it with a whispered apology. The pen meant that the pencils he hadn’t broken or worn down to nubs were worth trading, so he fished them out of his uniform and held them out to the Crow. “Six sheets of paper.” 

The Crow cocked his head, looking Ezra up and down. Ezra was used to the way that trading worked in the trenches. The men with the goods usually shorted the men without them, making the recipients trade with things that were worth far more than the items they wanted. Ezra felt that the trade he’d offered was more than fair, but he expected the Crow to ask for more. 

But the Crow said, “All right,” and took the pencils out of Ezra’s outstretched hand. “Paper?” 

Stunned, Ezra pulled six sheets of parchment out of his inside pocket and handed them over. The Crow counted the sheets, gave Ezra a quick nod, and tucked them inside the chest. He reached around for a moment, navigating through the contents of his trunk by touch alone, and eventually produced a pair of thick black socks. 

Ezra took the socks quickly and shoved them into one of his pockets before buttoning it shut. 

“Anything else?” 

“Uh,” Ezra stammered, “cigarettes. I have three days’ worth of rationed tobacco.”

The Crow flashed Ezra a sharp smile. “It’s awful, isn’t it?” 

“Rubbish.”

“Can give you six cigarettes for that.” 

Ezra raised an eyebrow. “Six?” 

“What, are you planning on sitting around chain smoking?” 

Ezra narrowed his eyes. “Seven.” 

“Six.” 

“Seven, or I’ll find someone with a pipe who’ll give me a whole tin for what I have.” 

The Crow smiled again, and this time it almost reached his dark eyes. He knew as well as Ezra did that there weren’t many men who were likely to actually trade a tin of cigarettes for anything less than a week’s worth of tobacco rations, but for some reason he sighed and said, “Fine. Seven.” 

When the cigarettes were safely tucked into Ezra’s tin and stored away inside his coat, Ezra made his best attempt at a genuine smile. 

“It was a pleasure doing business with you.” 

The Crow shut the lid of his trunk and slid a brass padlock through the latch, snapping it shut with a click. He pulled a shovel away from the wall of the barracks and settled it across his shoulders. 

“Come back sometime,” the Crow said. For a moment, Ezra thought he might have winked. “You know where to find me.” 

He disappeared into the stream of men rushing through the trench. It took a moment for Ezra to gather himself, but after a handful of seconds, he followed. 

*********

“You know poetry, London?” 

Ezra couldn’t identify the source of the voice. He was sitting in a circle of men in the dark, smoking and talking in hushed whispers and fighting back against the drowsiness that was threatening to wrestle him into sleep. 

“I’m sorry,” Ezra said. “Are you asking me?” 

The voice huffed out a laugh. “Yep. London. Proper posh, you are.” 

“Sounds like a fuckin’ fairy,” another voice said. Gruffer, harsher. 

Ezra flushed, and he was immediately grateful for the cover of darkness. “There’s really no call for that kind of talk.” 

“Shut up, Graham,” said the first voice. “Oi, London. Gonna answer me?” 

“Sorry.” Ezra sucked on his cigarette, blew a puff of smoke across the circle. “Yes, I know poetry.” 

The night was a symphony of horrible sounds. They were the same sounds that raged throughout the day, but Ezra found them worse after the sun had gone down. The boom of shells was louder somehow, and one could never tell where they landed. There were no visible explosions to mark, no way of knowing where the next would fall. In between the shell blasts was the constant chattering of machine guns, the rapid gnashing of terrible teeth. And then there were the screams when someone was hit, the cries for help in the aftermath when a foreign shell found its mark. 

Ezra had never stopped being afraid of the noise. He’d simply internalized that terror, clinging to it in the vain hope that it might keep him alive. But the men around him needed distractions, something else to focus on, and so Ezra recited poems. 

“Let’s hear somethin’, Ez.” This was Ted, a quiet voice to Ezra’s right. 

Ezra cleared his throat and took a final drag from his smoke before putting the butt into the mud. 

“I had a dream,” Ezra began, “which was not at all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space, rayless and pathless, and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air…” 

As he spoke, pulling words another had written out of his memory, Ezra tried to focus on the sound of his own voice. He tried to hear the other men breathing, wanting to make it louder than the cacophonous racket that deadened the air. 

It worked for a moment. Only a moment, only the shortest span of seconds, but it was better than nothing. 

“...the winds were withered in the stagnant air, and the clouds perished,” Ezra said. “Darkness had no need of aid from them — She was the Universe.” 

Ezra cleared his throat and fell silent, and the sounds of darkness reigned once more. 

And then a clear, Canadian-accented voice said, “I’d call that one a downer, really,” and Ezra stiffened. When had he gotten here? How much had he heard?

A laugh rippled through the group. 

“Crow’s here,” said the gruff voice from before. 

“Yes, hello,” the Crow said, and Ezra thought that he could hear the sharpness of that smile. “No trades tonight, boys. Just here for the man with the stolen words.”

Ezra leaned forward with a sniff. “They aren’t _stolen._ They simply aren’t mine.” 

“Semantics,” the Crow teased, and the men laughed again. “Go on, then. Got any more words that aren’t yours?”

“Somethin’ about girls,” suggested the man who’d first requested a recitation. “We could all use a bit o’ the ladies, eh?” 

_Not all of us,_ Ezra thought pointedly, but he began to speak once more, letting the sounds of shots and explosions and shouts be the background for (stolen, perhaps, this time) words about love. 

“Jenny kissed me when we met, jumping from the chair she sat in…”

*********

Ezra thrust his shovel into the mud once more, pushing until he felt it stop moving, weighed down by damp earth. He pulled it out and tossed its contents onto the ever-growing pile on the top of the trench. On either side of him, a half-dozen men were doing the same. 

_Heads down,_ Ezra thought forcefully, hoping that they would hear him. _Keep your heads down._

It should have been a hard thing to forget, but it happened. Someone would get tired, would stand up straight to stretch his back, and he’d catch a bullet in the cheek. Ezra had seen it happen, and he had no desire to do so again. 

Ted was mumbling something under his breath as he dug, every muscle in his body tense. Like Ezra and the others, Ted was covered in mud. Every inch of ground in Passchendaele stank with rot, even the places that hadn’t yet been touched by hands or shovels or shells, and Ezra knew that they were covering themselves in that stench. It got to people sometimes, the smell. Got in their heads. Made them think about what it was they were smelling, which was a dangerous train of thought that led nowhere but into darkness. 

Ezra leaned in closer to Ted the next time that he drove his shovel into the ground, trying to make out what he was saying. He caught short snatches of words, a few familiar phrases. 

“...defend us in battle… wickedness and snares of the Devil…” 

“Saint Michael the Archangel,” Ezra said, just loudly enough for Ted to hear. 

Ted stopped mid-prayer and raised an eyebrow in Ezra’s direction. 

“He’s a fitting choice, I should think,” Ezra said. “Given the circumstances.” 

“Dunno that anyone’s listenin’ to me,” Ted confessed. “But it’s… dunno. Don’ need to think about it, y’know? Jus’ easy to say.” 

In London, Ezra had thought that he’d believed in a God. Some higher power, some force of good. But there was no god in Passchendaele, so he’d stopped praying. 

In spite of this, Ezra patted Ted on the arm and said, “I know.” 

Ted took a deep breath, and there was a momentary lull in the sounds of the battle that raged around them. Quiet came so rarely that it was jarring. It seemed to suck the oxygen out of the air, leaving nothing but the ringing in Ezra’s ears and the bitten-off end of the Crow’s laugh. 

The Crow was digging with Ezra’s crew today, and he was standing three men to Ezra’s left. Ezra had been trying to ignore this fact. It wouldn’t do to get caught staring, to be seen with red cheeks as he gazed at another man. This wasn’t the place for that. But all day, every few minutes, the Crow’s laugh would brighten their corner of the trench, and it would send shivers down Ezra’s spine. 

The rattling chorus of machines and shouts and screams picked up again, and Ezra shook his head to clear the sound of silence. There was a glimmer of hope that rose up in his chest every time the fighting stopped. Maybe the Austrians had retreated. Maybe they had run, abandoned their trenches and fled. And Ezra could go home, maybe. Get leave, see his mother. But the battle would always roar back to life, and so every silence made Ezra lose a little more hope.

Ted sighed, a heavy sound that whistled through his teeth. “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.” 

*********

Ezra found himself staring up at the sky, clouds colored a dull grey with the light of early evening. His ears were full of something wet, and there was a strange weight on his chest, and everything sounded like a scream. Ezra fought to move, tried to scramble backwards, but his boots didn’t catch on anything solid. They slid through the mud like knives through butter. 

The weight on his chest shifted, and a soft noise cut through the screaming-piercing-ringing in his ears. 

“Ezra.” Too calm, too solid. Too beautiful a sound to be heard here. 

“No,” Ezra said, slamming his eyes shut. “No, no, don’t talk to me, you’re dying, don’t talk to me, please.” 

“I’m not dying,” the Crow said quickly. “But we need to go, Ezra. We need to move.” 

The Crow grunted, and the pressure on Ezra’s chest released. There was a horrible splash to Ezra’s left, and he clenched his jaw. 

“Go where?” 

“Away.” The Crow’s long fingers wrapped themselves into the front of Ezra’s coat, and with another grunt, he pulled Ezra to his feet. “You gotta open your eyes, kid. C’mon.” 

“Ted,” Ezra said, forcing his eyes open. The trench was gone. “Where’s—” 

“Let’s go.” 

The Crow’s helmet was gone, and the left side of his face was covered in dark blood. It was shining and wet, trickling down from a gash near his hairline. There were bloodstains strewn across his uniform, but Ezra couldn’t spot any wounds. 

“They’re going to fire again, Ezra,” the Crow hissed. “Let’s _go._ ” 

And then he took Ezra’s hand and tugged him forward, half-dragging him through the mud. As Ezra took stumbling steps, he forced himself to look at the back of the Crow’s head instead of the ground. He knew what he would find there. He knew without asking, without trying to remember the shell blast. The evidence was strewn through the Crow’s tone of voice and etched in every one of his jerky and shattered-looking movements. 

“Climb,” the Crow said when they reached the edge of the crater. “We’ll go together. Pause at the top.” 

Ezra did as he was told. He found handholds and footholds in the mud, clutching at the solid objects that had been wedged there by the force of the blast. A piece of burned-out tree branch. A helmet. A boot, too solid to be empty. He didn’t think about it, didn’t let the bile rise in his throat. He just climbed, just hauled his body up the walls of the hole. And he didn’t pause to wonder at how he’d survived, because he knew the answer. The only real authority in the trenches was Lady Luck, cruel and merciful in equal measure. She took people who should have lived, saved people who should have died. Lady Luck was the judge, jury, and executioner of men who didn’t know the crimes they’d committed before they were condemned for them. 

The Crow pressed a mud-coated finger to his lips and lifted his head above the top of the crater. Ezra stared up at him, waiting for shots to come. But none did, so the Crow slithered over the edge on his belly. Ezra did the same, propping himself onto his elbows and eating mouthfuls of mud as he moved. 

There were stories told in the trenches about the creatures who lived in No Man’s Land. Wild deserters, they were called. Depending on who told the stories, they were ghosts or ghouls or devils or angels. Supernatural, violating every law of nature, making their homes in hollowed-out craters and abandoned trenches. 

Ezra wasn’t sure if he believed in ghosts, but as he crawled through the mud of No Man’s Land, he wondered if he would become one. 

“Shell-hole on the left,” the Crow said over his shoulder, and Ezra stared blankly back at him. “Come on, angel. Don’t think, just follow.” 

The Crow stopped on the edge of the hole and flipped onto his back, sliding into it feet-first. The rattle of gunfire swept across the open expanse of land between the trenches, and Ezra found that he hated it more up here than he ever had down below. It felt closer, and it was coming from both sides. 

He took a breath, twisted his body around, and pushed himself into the crater. 

The Crow had crushed his skinny body against the side of the hole. Ezra moved next to him, trying to dig his boots into the mud as he sat down. 

“Thank you,” Ezra said, hating the way his voice quivered on those two small syllables. He was a soldier. He’d seen death before. He shouldn’t fear it anymore, shouldn’t feel like the terror in his gut was going to turn him inside out. 

“Don’t thank me.” Some of the calm had faded from the Crow’s tone now. He looked well and truly frightened, dark eyes wide and thin frame shaking. “I didn’t… we’re not safe.” 

“We are certainly safer than we were.” 

As if to prove Ezra’s words, the ground shook with an explosion. Even from inside their hole, they could see the spray of dirt and mud rising from the approximate direction of the crater they’d just left. 

_‘They’re going to fire again,”_ the Crow had said, and they had. Just to double-check, to make sure that the destruction was total. A second shell intended only for survivors. 

Ted’s voice rang in Ezra’s head, still whispering that prayer. It hadn’t done him any good in the end, but Ezra found his lips moving with those same words anyway. His prayer to St. Michael was soundless, as voiceless as the man who’d prayed it mere hours before. It was a eulogy of sorts, that silence. A goodbye. 

The Crow cleared his throat and shifted closer to Ezra. “Anthony Crowley.” 

“Sorry?” 

“My name is Anthony Crowley. ‘The Crow,’ it’s just a silly sort of title. The man who gave it to me… he liked that it had a double meaning.” 

“Hello, Anthony.” Crowley’s body shook with a shiver, and when he turned his head to meet Ezra’s eyes, Ezra saw that the cut on his face had finally stopped bleeding. “I’m Ezra Fell.” 

“That’s good,” Crowley said softly. “It’s good to know the name of the man you’ll die with.”

For all of his knowledge of words, in spite of his endless memory bank of poetry and prose and phrases of his own, Ezra couldn’t find anything to say to that. 

So he asked about the man who’d given Crowley his moniker instead. 

“The person who first called you ‘the Crow,’” Ezra began. “Where is he?” 

Crowley pulled his waterbottle off of his hip and unscrewed the cap. He poured a little over his hands before spilling some down the blood-caked side of his face. A grey handkerchief from his pocket served as a sort of washcloth, turning the color of rust with every swipe. He smudged the damp cloth across his entire face, and when he was done, Ezra could see the frighteningly white pallor of his skin. 

“He was at the Somme,” Crowley answered, tucking the filthy handkerchief back into his pocket. “Didn’t make it out.” 

Ezra was overcome with the urge to bite off his own tongue, but he swallowed back the lump in his throat and said, “I’m terribly sorry, my dear.” 

“So am I,” Crowley said with a mirthless laugh. “But that’s just how things go out here, isn’t it?” 

“‘War is hell,’” Ezra muttered. “Some American general said that, I think. I read it somewhere.” 

“Good to know things don’t change, eh?” Crowley shook his head and groaned at the pain of it. “War’s still hell.” 

Ezra’s thoughts drifted back to Ted. To Graham, Patrick, Paul, Keenan, Drew. To the men who’d been killed before Ezra had even had the chance to learn their names, lying in a crater full of blood-made mud. 

“Did you…” Ezra bit off the middle of his sentence, chewed on the soft skin on the inside of his cheek. “The shell. The blast. I can’t seem to remember what happened. Did you— did you see?” 

Crowley stiffened, digging his boots deeper into the ground and leaning back on his elbows. He didn’t look at Ezra. He stared upward instead, shoulders moving in small flinches at every clearly audible shell-blast. 

It really wasn’t the time to be thinking such things, but Ezra couldn’t help but notice that Crowley was a certain kind of beautiful. He was sharp-featured and his nose was slightly crooked, and his cheekbones rose high beneath his eyes. He looked like someone had taken the time to craft him by hand, leaving enough little imperfections that he looked solid and real. 

And then Crowley said, “Yeah, I saw,” and Ezra’s lungs crumpled like paper in a fist. 

“What did—”

“He jumped in front of you,” Crowley said slowly. Every word hit the mud and sank into it. “Ted. He heard the whistle of the shell before anyone else, I think. And he shouted at us to get down, and then he…” Crowley shook his head again, taking a breath as he did so. Ezra could see the muscles in his jaw flexing, could see him forcing himself to say the words. “He jumped at you. Shoved you into the mud, covered your body with his.” 

Ezra couldn’t breathe. His paper lungs had caught fire and were burning, and his mouth tasted like smoke. 

“Was he,” Ezra choked out, “in pain? Was he— did he hurt?” 

“I don’t know,” Crowley said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. He wasn’t… he wasn’t _there_ anymore when I got to him. I saw you move, though. Under him.” 

The memory slammed into Ezra like a freight train. A weight on his chest. Crowley grunting, a thick-sounding splash. 

“Fuck,” Ezra said. “Fuck.” 

“I said earlier that I didn’t save you.” Crowley still hadn’t looked over at Ezra. “I didn’t. He did. This, out here?” Crowley gestured to the crater, lifted a hand up over his head, fingers stretched toward No Man’s Land. “I don’t know if we’re getting out of this. But I couldn’t leave you there, and the shelling was pretty bad downtrench as well — the damned Austrians must have launched a couple at a time, got lucky with where they landed — so I just. Finished what Ted started.” 

“I didn’t know him from before,” Ezra said numbly. “He was from Westchester, not London. We met on the train.” 

“This’ll forge bonds, though,” Crowley said. “War. Battle. Not-dying together.” 

“Lady Luck,” Ezra muttered, and Crowley laughed. 

“Not this time. We shouldn’t have survived that. We wouldn’t have done if not for a brave man and my stupid nickname.” 

Ezra cocked his head. “What?”

“I was standing back,” Crowley said, words coming in a rush. “I was… I was fucking _trading,_ Ezra. Was emptying my pockets a little ways down the trench, looking for cigs to give to the lieutenant. I’d glanced up when I heard Ted yelling, which is why I saw. It’s why I. You know.” 

“It’s why you survived.” 

The muscles in Crowley’s jaw jumped again, and Ezra watched his throat work as he made himself swallow, made himself breathe. 

“Yeah.”

The last of the day’s light was stretched across their side of the crater. Crowley looked small in it, fragile and close to breaking. His calm was gone, and his strength along with it. 

Ezra wriggled closer to him, took a breath, and draped an arm around Crowley’s waist. It was meant to be an anchor, something sure and steady that they could both hold onto, but Ezra feared that Crowley would pull away.

Crowley didn’t. He collapsed at the touch, falling into Ezra’s side like the last tile in a line of dominos. It was a single flowing motion, a spineless sort of slump. Crowley was sucking in breaths that were quick and shallow, and Ezra could feel the heaving of his chest. 

“Let’s talk about something else,” Ezra suggested. “Anything else.” 

Crowley pulled his own body back up into a seated position, but he didn’t shift out of Ezra’s embrace. 

“I have a better idea,” Crowley said. “How about a trade?”

Ezra half-choked on a laugh. “A trade? Here?” 

“I happen to know that you have something I want,” Crowley said. “And I’m willing to offer you something in return for it.” 

“I’ll share my cigarettes with you. You don’t need to give me anything.” 

Crowley’s breath skated through Ezra’s curls. “Not what I wanted.” 

“What, then?” 

“Words,” Crowley said, and Ezra felt the cool ghost of a smile. “Stolen ones, preferably.” 

Ezra tilted his head back and stared at the sky. He could make out the outline of Crowley’s ear, the side of his jaw, one of the matted locks of his dark hair. They were pieces of Crowley that cut dark shapes out of the clouded night, and Ezra was transfixed by them. 

“You want me to recite a poem.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Here,” Ezra said flatly. “You want… you want _poetry,_ in this hole in the ground.” 

“We might die tonight, Ezra,” Crowley bit back. “You have a magic voice and you know beautiful words. Trade with me.” 

It should have been an easy answer from the start, and Ezra felt a surge of regret at the moments he’d wasted not giving it.

“Of course, Anthony,” Ezra said. “But I suppose I should know what I’m trading for.” 

The soft laugh that had started to trickle out of Crowley’s mouth was dead almost as soon as it started. The sound of a shell tearing up the earth hit Ezra’s ears, too loud to be distant, and his grip on Crowley’s waist became viselike. Crowley’s body tightened momentarily as well, all of his muscles locking, and Ezra was overcome by the urge to protect him. He wondered if Crowley had ever been kept safe, if he had someone at home who missed him. 

You didn’t know those things about the men you fought with unless they told you, and Crowley was a man with a title for a name. He was the Crow. He’d taken on the words as a piece of armor, weaponizing a joke. That spoke to how Crowley viewed his identity, his privacy. 

_Is there anyone waiting for you?_ Ezra didn’t ask. 

There was a soft squishing sound from the ground between himself and Crowley, and then one of Crowley’s arms landed tentatively around Ezra’s shoulders. 

Ezra didn’t comment on it. He pushed back against the pleasantly unfamiliar weight, smiling in spite of everything when it became more solid. 

Sometimes it was good to be held, even if it came under the cover of darkness. Even if it only happened because Death was stalking through the mire of a Belgian field, searching for souls to steal. Even if. 

Crowley shook once, a full-body shiver, and then he answered Ezra’s question. “I’ll trade you stories. A story for a poem.” 

“Stories about what?” 

“You’ll have to find out, won’t you?”

“I suppose I shall,” Ezra said. “I’ll go first, shall I?” 

“Gotta show your wares before I offer a trade.” 

Ezra made a noise that was slightly to the left of a laugh, and then he licked the drying mud off of his lips and started to speak. 

“A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion…” 

*********

The moon was high in the sky now, but neither Ezra nor Crowley had even so much as considered sleep. They hadn’t discussed it. They hadn’t needed to. There was no chance of sleep here, because to fall asleep would be to leave the other alone with his thoughts. So they stayed awake and talked in low whispers, eyes trained on the faint dark line that separated the top of their pit from the vast wasteland around it. They were keeping watch, listening for footsteps, and trying not to think about the fact that they were completely defenseless.

Ezra had his own reason for avoiding sleep, of course. It was the same one he’d had in the trenches, but there was a new face that he wasn’t ready to see. 

He wondered if Crowley saw them, the faces of the people he’d lost. But that wasn’t a question that was worth giving voice to. It was a personal kind of pain, so he kept it wrapped in razor wire inside of his own chest. 

They sat against the side of the shell-hole with their bodies pressed together from shoulder to ankle, arms still wrapped around each other. Poems and stories had stopped being enough after a few hours, and so they’d changed the trade. 

“Secrets,” Crowley had said, and Ezra had thought that he could almost hear the smirk twisting the corners of Crowley’s lovely mouth. 

Ezra had fished a dented tin of canned meat out of one of the pouches of his uniform a few minutes prior, and he and Crowley were still picking at it with muddied fingers. With every mouthful, Ezra tried to convince himself that it would be enough. 

His stomach disagreed, and in one of the brief moments of pause between words, it let out an embarrassingly loud rumble. He elected to ignore it, scraping at the inside of the tin with his fingernails. 

Next to him, Crowley grunted and twisted sideways. There was the sound of metal releasing metal followed by the rustling of thick fabric, and then Ezra found himself being handed a piece of hard bread. 

“Eat that,” said Crowley. 

“It’s yours.” 

“Was mine, now it’s yours.” 

“Anthony,” Ezra started to protest, but Crowley grunted again. 

“Shh. My turn for a secret. Eat your bread.” 

With a grateful look that Crowley couldn’t see, Ezra did. 

“I’ve never kissed anyone that I actually had an interest in kissing,” Crowley said. 

Ezra swallowed his mouthful of half-chewed stale bread, wincing at the way it scratched his throat. “What?” 

“Not that it was ever a… a thing I didn’t _want,_ ” Crowley clarified. “I always went along with it of my own free will. Kissed, ah. Four women in my twenty-one years, I think?” 

“Then what do you mean when you say—” 

“Secrets stay between us,” Crowley interrupted, suddenly forceful. “They don’t get repeated.” 

“Between us,” Ezra agreed. 

Crowley’s arm dropped away from Ezra’s neck, and it hollowed out a part of Ezra’s heart. Was he pulling away? Had Ezra said something to break his trust?

And then Crowley said, “Women aren’t really my thing.” 

Ezra didn’t dare move, didn’t dare breathe. He sat perfectly still, and he waited. 

“At all,” Crowley finished. “They aren’t… I’m not…” 

“You don’t want them in the way people say you should,” Ezra said quietly. “Because you prefer—” 

“Men.” 

“Oh,” Ezra said. His heart was beating quickly, far too quickly, and it wasn’t from fear. It should have been terror that caused it to race, or at the very least concern about the possibility of impending death, but it wasn’t. 

It was, of all things, incandescent joy. 

And then Crowley _was_ pulling away, shifting his hip so it was no longer touching Ezra’s, apologies spilling off of his lips. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I— I suppose I keep thinking that if I’m going to die, someone should know, and there’s no one else to tell, and I—” 

“My goodness, Anthony,” Ezra broke in, unable to keep his words to himself. “It’s my turn to tell you a secret.” 

“Ezra.” Crowley’s wonderful voice was laced up and strained, and Ezra hated that. 

“My secret, my _biggest_ secret, is the same as yours.” 

Crowley’s hand froze in its retreat, the tips of his fingers resting at the nape of Ezra’s neck. He made a series of small noises, untranslatable but somehow perfectly intelligible, and Ezra could hear the gentle sound of his teeth clicking together as he shut his jaw. 

When Crowley finally did speak, his words weren’t anything close to what Ezra had thought they would be. 

“Lady Luck,” Crowley said shakily, “is finally doing some fucking good.” 

“Yes.” 

“I don’t believe in Lady Luck.” 

Ezra smiled, and it was the warmest he’d felt in months. “Me either, but she’s all the explanation we get.” 

“So it’s obligatory belief.” 

“Yes.” Ezra was freezing, and he was wet, and he was exhausted. The last thing he should have wanted to do was move, but he couldn’t stop himself. He closed the gap that Crowley had made between them, and he leaned his head back against the side of the crater. 

Much to his relief, Crowley’s arm slid back into place across his shoulders. Crowley went a step further this time, bringing himself closer to Ezra. He dropped his face down, resting his nose in Ezra’s matted curls. 

_If we were anywhere but here,_ Ezra thought as Crowley’s breath skated over his cheek, _I would ask you if you would like to come with me for a drink. I would like to kiss you in the dark, hold your body close to mine. If we were anywhere but here, if I knew we would survive this, I would let myself want you. I would let myself want to love you._

But they were here, so Ezra held Crowley and let himself be held, and it was almost enough to make him hope that the sun would rise on them again. 

**********

Just before dawn, there were footsteps.

Crowley’s body went rigid at the sound. He was frozen for only a moment before his big hand was on the back of Ezra’s head and he was shoving Ezra face-first into the mud at the bottom of their shell hole. 

“Stay,” Crowley said. “Don’t you fucking move.” 

And then there was a familiar weight draped across Ezra’s lower back and upper legs (similar but not the same as the one that had been there the day before, because Crowley weighed less than Ted had done), and Ezra forced himself to breathe through the one nostril that wasn’t buried in putrid sludge. He took shallow breaths and let them out slowly, careful not to disturb the mud that was filling his nose and working its way between his teeth. 

There were gunshots close by, and Ezra commanded his body not to move. Even a flinch could be enough for someone on top of the crater to see. 

His insides tied themselves in knots as the footsteps came closer. This could be it, this could be the end, this could be where everything that he was would come to an end. And Ted. What would Ted have died for? 

The steps came to a stop, and Ezra braced himself for the slick slide of boots through mud as someone made their way into the hole to check the corpses at the bottom. He readied himself to hear a man speak in German, and he tried not to think about whether dying would hurt. 

But then a voice said, “Oh, bloody fucking shit,” in a rough Scottish accent, and Ezra’s heart leapt into his throat. 

“Two of ‘em, both English,” another man said. He sounded southern, from London or close to it. “Christ.” 

When Crowley spoke, his voice held the same unshakable calm as it had the day before. He said two words, emphasizing every single letter of them so he couldn’t possibly be misheard. 

“Don’t shoot.” 

“Fuck,” said the first patrolman. “Are you alive down there?” 

“Both of us,” Crowley said. He still hadn’t moved, so Ezra didn’t either. 

“Hands up, then,” the second man said. “Both o’ you. Now.” 

Ezra did as he was told, lifting only his arms and hands off of the ground. 

The next command came immediately. “Stand.” 

Crowley pushed himself away from the ground and rolled off of Ezra. Ezra followed suit, getting to his feet as quickly as he could. He found himself looking up at the barrels of two rifles, and he raised his hands again. 

“Right, then,” said the first man. “Climb out. No sudden movements.” 

Still barely breathing, Ezra followed Crowley out of the crater. 

“Tags,” said the second man. “‘N be quick abou’ it. Be light soon, and we’ll all be fucked.” 

Ezra stuck a hand down the front of his uniform and took out his tags, holding them as far out toward the patrolmen as he could manage. Beside him, Crowley did the same. 

The second patrolman dropped the nose of his rifle. “Christ. Okay, then. Best move b’fore we’re seen.” 

From the moment that Ezra had set foot in Passchendaele, he had hated the trenches. They stank of death and tobacco and sweat, and there was no way to tell if you’d ever be safe in any part of them. The trenches were terrible, and for as long as Ezra had been in them, he’d been dreaming of the day he would get to leave. 

But as he climbed the ladder down into the trench, the casual conversation that he and Crowley had struck up with the patrolmen became a muddled blend of indistinct sounds in his mind. The mud clung to his boots, pulled him down with every sucking step, and he loved it. 

It wasn’t home, and it wasn’t safe, but it was better than the uncertainty of the place he’d spent the night. The trenches were gassed, blown apart, and flooded with horrifying frequency, and Ezra knew this. But dying in the trench meant that there was a chance someone could find you, and that was leaps and bounds better than the anonymous nothing of death in No Man’s Land. 

A thin hand wrapped itself around Ezra’s elbow, shaking him free of the terrified relief that he was drowning in. 

“Barracks,” Crowley said softly. “Time to sleep, Ezra.” 

_Sleep,_ Ezra thought brokenly, _is Hell._ And then he wept, tears coming hot and fast and sobs tearing their way up his throat. It hit him all at once, everything he hadn’t let himself feel in the crater because he hadn’t wanted to die afraid, and he expected Crowley to leave him to his misery. 

But Crowley didn’t leave. Instead, he pulled Ezra against the flat plane of his chest, buried a hand in Ezra’s mud-and-blood-caked hair. He whispered gentle things, and when Ezra’s knees gave out, Crowley sank to the ground and held him. 

**********

For the next month, Ezra was Crowley’s shadow, and Crowley was his. Whenever they could manage it, they were together. They dug together, fought together, ate together. They even slept together, on neighboring cots or against sandbags, when Ezra could bring himself to sleep. And when Ezra couldn’t sleep, he would keep watch over Crowley, keeping him from harm.

Sometimes, Crowley would offer a trade. He’d ask Ezra to tell him a poem in exchange for a cigarette or a packet of biscuits or a piece of chocolate, and Ezra always would. Crowley would thank him, call him an angel (for which he never offered any explanation, even when Ezra asked), and settle in to listen to Ezra recite words that weren’t his. 

Ezra learned things about Crowley during that month. He learned that Crowley was from Victoria and didn’t really have any preference when it came to what he ate (which was something that Ezra hadn’t even considered to be a possibility, but Crowley had shrugged off his shock and explained that food was just something that was necessary, not something he enjoyed). He discovered that Crowley’s smile wasn’t as sharp once Crowley knew the person he was smiling at. He saw Crowley’s eyes in the sunlight on a rare day where the clouds didn’t report for duty, and he learned that Crowley’s eyes were the color of dark honey. He learned that Crowley could whistle, and that Crowley liked to sing, and that Crowley had a birthmark on the skin in front of his ear. He learned that Crowley’s handsome face lost some of its harshness when he slept — his jaw wasn’t quite so tight, his lips weren’t stretched so thin, and the tension around his dark eyes melted away. And he learned that Crowley didn’t talk about his family, didn’t so much as mention the life he’d left behind, and so he learned to stop asking. 

Ezra learned something new about himself over the course of the month, as well. He learned that he could fall in love with someone. 

The first time Ezra realized he was in love with Crowley was the first time that Crowley was sent off through the trenches alone. It was three weeks after the explosion that had taken Ted and brought Ezra and Crowley to each other, and Ezra wasn’t ready to be alone. But there had been orders from some officer, a command to deliver a message to someone down the line, and Crowley had been asked to go. 

Ezra had grabbed him by the shoulders, suddenly terrified that Crowley wouldn’t come back. He knew that this was a war, that bad things and accidents happened, but he’d never been this afraid that a friend might not return from a routine errand. It had always been a possibility, but it had never been one that Ezra had seriously thought about. 

So Ezra had locked his hand around the back of Crowley’s neck and said, “Come back to me.” 

Crowley had promised that he would, and a few hours later, he had. Ezra had tried to apologize, feeling foolish for being so afraid and stupid for letting himself fall in love in the middle of a fucking war, but Crowley hadn’t let him. Crowley had pressed a hand gently to Ezra’s mouth and stifled the words, so Ezra had stopped apologizing. 

“I’ll come back to you,” Crowley had said, “and you’ll come back to me.”

Ten days later, on a Tuesday in the middle of September, Ezra learned what it felt like to lose the man he loved. 

Crowley’s battalion was part of the first wave to make an attempt at an advance toward the enemy line. Ezra was pressed against the back wall of the trench, ready to run in the second wave, but he was thinking of nothing but Crowley. The first wave always suffered more than the rest. 

The whistle sounded, and Ezra watched Crowley pull himself over the top of the trench, motions easy and decisive. He blinked once, twice. Told himself that everything would be okay. And then he locked his bayonet into place and crossed to the ladder, forcing himself to become empty. 

It didn’t help to be afraid, didn’t do any good to worry, and so Ezra made himself hollow. Shouts and screams and gunfire were nothing but noises. They meant nothing to him now, because he couldn’t let them. 

And then the second whistle blast pierced the air, and Ezra moved up the ladder. Hand over hand, one foot after the other. 

It wasn’t until Ezra was back in the barracks many hours later that he realized he hadn’t seen Crowley. He ran up the down trench, scanning the faces of the wounded for warm eyes and high cheekbones, for dark hair and beautiful hands, but he came up empty. 

For the rest of the night, Ezra crept through the trench, asking anyone who was awake one simple question. 

“Have you seen the Crow?” 

He was answered with headshakes and negatives and was given a half dozen names of other well-known traders. Desperation grew in his chest with every man who didn’t know where Crowley was, and by the time he found one of the lieutenants of Crowley’s battalion, he was tired of asking. 

But the lieutenant had an answer, and it threw invisible shards of glass into Ezra’s chest. 

“Wounded,” the lieutenant said gruffly. “Shrapnel to the leg. He was alive the last I saw him, though. Stretcher-bearers had him, so I figure they got him to a hospital.” 

Ezra nodded and thanked the man, handing him a grubby cigarette and lighting it for him before taking his leave. 

He didn’t remember returning to the barracks. He didn’t know when he’d started to cry, but tears rolled off of his nose and down his cheeks anyway. And this time, Crowley wasn’t there to hold him, so Ezra sat on the ground with his back braced against Crowley’s trunk full of treasure, and he wept. 

*********

_London, England_

_December, 1918_

Ezra didn’t talk about the war. 

He hugged his mother and kissed his sister, of course. He laid flowers on his father’s grave. He wrote to some old friends, asking if they had come home. Sometimes he got letters back, but mostly he did not. He made tea, and he read, and he worked odd jobs and stuck the money from them in a bank. He ate three meals a day even though he knew that it would take him months to get used to the taste of real food again. He did not sleep more than a few hours a night because he woke up screaming. And he smiled at his mother and laughed with his sister, and he didn’t _ever_ talk about the war. 

At night, his mind inevitably turned to Crowley. He thought of the last words that Crowley had said to him, the last words he’d said to Crowley. 

“I’ll see you after,” Crowley had said, leaning against the side of the trench and smiling at Ezra. “I swear I’ll be here. But I need you to promise me you’ll make it back to see me. You’ll do your charge, you’ll follow your orders, and then you will come back to me.” 

Ezra had moved to stand beside him, had slid his hand into Crowley’s for a fraction of a second, and said, “I will always come back to you.” 

Those words haunted him now. He heard them in the wind, on the radio, in the silence that was still so strange. The words were his ghosts, because he had come back. He had come back, but Crowley hadn’t been there to come back to. 

Ezra hoped that Crowley was alive somewhere. He imagined Crowley sauntering the streets of Victoria, his smile softer with the war behind him. He hoped that Crowley had found someone to kiss, and he tried to ignore the way his heart clenched at the thought that it wouldn’t be him. But he crushed down this impossible jealousy, and he hoped that Crowley had survived. And when he started to pray again, he prayed that Crowley had begun once more to live. 

It was harder to start living again after the war, Ezra knew, than it had been to stop at the start of it. 

*********

_May, 1923_

The twenties were well and truly roaring, but Ezra was content to be quiet in the midst of them. He’d acquired a small storefront in Soho in the early part of 1922, and in the fourteen months that had followed, he’d turned it into a bookshop. 

The shop was a comfort to him. It occupied an insignificant corner on an insignificant street in a part of London that was avoided by people who thought themselves proper, but Ezra loved it. He’d spent the years after the war gathering the books that filled its shelves, rescuing them mostly from crates left on street corners and haggling with other booksellers in an attempt to persuade them to lower their prices (which was both a pursuit in which he found himself surprisingly successful and one which made him think painfully of Crowley). He bought a few at full price, of course, and he worked to connect himself with publishers, but the ones he fought for were his favorites.

During the first year of business, Ezra felt rather like he was trying to build a stone castle on sand. Things would be going well, and he’d begin to feel steady, and then there would be a week where he sold nearly nothing. He would pay for electricity and find that there was nothing left with which to buy food, or he’d sell every copy of a book and have to turn away customers who came looking for it. His sale records were disorganized, and he hadn’t the faintest idea how to begin to sort out the accounting of it all, but he was happy. 

The bookshop was _his,_ and it was his home. It was full of other people’s words (the phrase ‘stolen words’ had lodged itself in Ezra’s brain, an echo of Crowley’s voice that was faded with distance and time), and Ezra spent many sleepless nights walking between the shelves, trailing his fingers across their spines. 

Books had never seemed fragile to him before the war. They had always been solid, always an anchor for Ezra’s soul, but they weren’t anymore. He’d seen too many lying in the mud, words smeared and paper torn, to think that they were anything close to strong. So Ezra protected them now, kept them clean and free of things that might harm them. 

It was a slow day today, and Ezra was fussing over the wreck of a book he’d found outside a hospital. It was a copy of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses,_ and Ezra knew many of the stories within it like the back of his hand. As he touched the pages, he knew that its owner had loved it — there were notes scribbled in the margins, and the paper was soft along the edges from prolonged touch and repeated use. 

He wouldn’t put this one on the shelf. No, he would take it into his one-room flat above the shop, and he would put it on his own bookshelf. It was someone’s heart in his hands, something impossibly precious, and he wanted to keep it safe. 

The bell above the door rang out, and Ezra heard the faint creak of footsteps on wood. 

“Hello,” Ezra called, shutting the pages of _Metamorphoses_ gently and moving out from around the till. “I’ll be with you in a moment.” 

As he walked toward the front of the shop, he listened for movement. Whenever someone came into the shop and Ezra wasn’t within view of the door, he played a game with himself. He tried to guess who his guest would be and started making a list of possible titles that they might enjoy. He didn’t have a great deal of accuracy in this game — sometimes the person he’d guessed would be a man by the weight of their footfalls would be a woman holding a child, or he would mistake the sound of a shifting overcoat for the swish of a skirt. Still, it was a thrill when he guessed correctly, and so Ezra kept playing. 

The person who had come into his shop this afternoon had a strange gait to their walk. At first, Ezra thought that he heard them take first a heavy step and then a lighter one, but he realized quickly that he was wrong. The first step, the heavier one, had a slight double-beat. Thunk-tap, step. Thunk-tap, step. 

_An older man with a cane,_ Ezra guessed with a little smile, and then he straightened his waistcoat and stepped around the edge of the final bookshelf. 

“I should have known I’d find you with books,” said the man in the center of the floor, and Ezra’s vision went blurry. 

He knew that voice. He knew that _face._

“Anthony,” Ezra said. His knees were shaking, barely keeping him standing, and he braced himself against the end of a shelf. “Anthony.” 

Crowley took a few steps forward, slower than he’d ever moved before, and Ezra registered that his guess had been partially correct. Crowley’s right hand was wrapped around the top of a dark wooden cane, fingers clutching at some shiny metal, and he leaned on it when he walked. 

_Shrapnel to the leg,_ Ezra remembered, the face of a Canadian lieutenant floating before his eyes. 

“Hi, angel,” Crowley said, coming to a stop a few feet from where Ezra was clutching at the wood of a bookshelf like it was a life preserver in a stormy sea. “Sorry it took me so long to come back to you.” 

“You missed our trade,” Ezra choked out, tongue heavy with the words. It was a ridiculous thing to say, the pettiest thing, but it was all Ezra’s shock-addled brain was able to think about. “I couldn’t find any cigarettes.” 

Crowley laughed at that, and Ezra thought he might die from the sound of it. When he’d heard Crowley laugh before, when the ground beneath their feet had been mud instead of wood, when the air had been bitter with the burn of gas instead of soft with the smell of paper and glue, Crowley’s laugh had been a short thing. A barking noise, harsh and over too quickly. 

It wasn’t like that anymore. It lasted for whole _seconds,_ and it moved like music, and Ezra wanted to bottle it and keep it close. 

“Missed it by a few years, yeah,” Crowley muttered when he’d stopped laughing. “I’m so sorry, Ezra.” 

“What are you sorry for, you impossible man?” 

“I left you,” Crowley said, and the cold thing that had taken up residence in Ezra’s heart the day that Crowley had been wounded at Passchendaele six years prior shattered. “I didn’t mean to, and I would have— I would have come back sooner, I swear I would have, but I needed to—” 

Ezra shook his head and closed the distance between himself and Crowley, reaching up to press a finger against Crowley’s lips. 

“You’re here,” Ezra forced himself to say. “You’re _here._ ” 

Slowly, the hand that wasn’t holding the cane came to rest on Ezra’s waist, and Crowley bent his head to rest his chin against Ezra’s forehead. 

“I’m here.” 

Once, Ezra had thought about _If we were anywhere but here._ He’d imagined a world where he could be with Crowley or at least have the chance to be. He hadn’t been able to have it, not then, not there. But this was now, and this was here, and Crowley’s hand was on his waist again, so Ezra asked Crowley a question. 

“Anthony, would you like to have a drink with me?” _Because we are nowhere but here, so I am asking if you would like to come with me for a drink. Later, I will ask if I might kiss you, if you might let me hold your body close to mine. And because we are nowhere but here, because I have hope that we will go on living, I can let myself want you. I can let myself want to love you._

Crowley grinned at him, and it wasn’t sharp anymore. 

“I want to do whatever you want to do.” 

So Ezra pulled himself out of Crowley’s arms and took Crowley by the hand, and they went for a drink. 

*********

A few hours later, Ezra sat on his sofa with Crowley’s head in his lap. Crowley had closed his eyes, relaxing into the pressure of Ezra’s fingers in his hair. He was talking about a man he’d met on the boat from Canada to England, and he was smiling, and that made Ezra’s hands fall still. 

Crowley cracked one eye open and raised an eyebrow. “Are you okay?” 

The skin on Crowley’s forehead was wrinkled in concern, and it accentuated a thick line of white scar tissue near his hairline on the left side. 

Ezra sighed and brushed his thumb over the scar, hating the way that his body grew tense at the memory of how it had gotten there. He could see Crowley pouring water over his face, wiping blood off of his skin with methodical swipes of a handkerchief. The wound had healed on its own, leaving a jagged scar in its place. Ezra wanted to go back and fix it, bring a doctor whose hands would be steady enough to sew the gash shut. 

But Ezra couldn’t go back, so he pressed forward. 

“I would very much like to kiss you,” Ezra said gently, and Crowley’s eyes grew wide and bright. “If you aren’t opposed to it, of course. I know that we’ve been apart for a while, and we don’t know each other like we used to, but. I’ve wanted to kiss you since the day I met you, and I never had the chance to ask.” 

Crowley levered himself up onto his forearms and pushed himself backward, hauling his entire upper body into Ezra’s lap before shifting his weight so that his face was inches from Ezra’s. 

“I still haven’t…” Crowley stumbled over his words, not quite meeting Ezra’s eyes. “You know.” 

“Kissed someone you were interested in kissing?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Neither have I,” Ezra said, and that was enough to make Crowley look at him properly. 

“Really?” 

“Really.” 

“Oh.” 

“In fact,” Ezra said as he raised a hand to rest on the underside of Crowley’s jaw, “you actually have the advantage of experience. You, at least, have kissed _someone._ ” 

Crowley made a happy-sounding noise in the back of his throat and wrapped his arms around Ezra’s neck. 

“Suppose I should take the lead, then,” Crowley murmured. 

And then his lips were pressed against Ezra’s, and Ezra forgot that there had ever been anything else but this. 

Crowley pulled back after a few short seconds, eyes shining. He was halfway to saying something, his mouth forming the shape of a word, but Ezra didn’t let him speak. 

“Kiss me again, Anthony.” 

Ezra was happy to find that Crowley was only too willing to oblige that request and that he didn’t hesitate to fulfill others like it. The night spun away into nothing, passed in a blurred montage of movements and touches and gently whispered words. And when Ezra climbed into his bed, love-drunk and giddy, Crowley followed him. He fell asleep with his head pressed against the warmth of Crowley’s chest, his fingers tracing the lines of scars he had yet to see. 

He saw them in the morning. Crowley’s body looked nothing like his in most respects (he had lines where Ezra had curves, dark hair instead of light, freckles in places Ezra had none) but they both had scars that formed written histories on their skin. Razor wire here, a knife there, a bullet there. And on Crowley’s leg, just above the knee, there was more scar tissue than skin. 

Ezra looked at Crowley, watched his chest rise and fall with breath after breath, and his heart skipped a beat. He had always thought that Crowley was a thing of unparalleled beauty, even when he’d been buttoned up to the neck and laced down to the toes, when the only parts of Crowley’s skin he’d seen were on his face and throat and hands. But this was a new kind of wonderful, and he found that Crowley was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“It hurts more when it’s cold.” Crowley’s voice was scratchy with sleep, and Ezra wanted to kiss him. “Or when it’s raining. Or both. And it’s stiffer in the morning, takes a bit to warm up.” 

“All right,” Ezra said. “You’ll tell me, won’t you? If there’s anything I can do to help?” 

Crowley blinked at him. “Sure.” 

“Thank you,” Ezra said, and he pressed a kiss to the middle of Crowley’s chest. Crowley’s arms came up immediately, wrapping themselves around Ezra’s soft body, and Ezra let himself be folded into Crowley’s embrace. 

For nearly a quarter of an hour, the bedroom was silent save for the faint sounds of the street below. 

And then Crowley said, “I don’t want to go back to Canada, Ezra.” 

Ezra tilted his head to the side and nuzzled his nose into the base of Crowley’s neck. 

“Were you planning to go back?” 

“I…” Crowley sighed. “I didn’t know if I’d find you. I wasn’t even— look, angel, when I got on that boat, I wasn’t even sure if you were alive. But I had to know. I had to try to, to come back to you.” 

“And if you found me?” 

Crowley laughed, a low rumble that made its way into Ezra’s bones. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” 

“Let me ask you this, then, my darling,” Ezra said. The word made Crowley shiver, and Ezra kissed the side of his throat. “I am alive, and you have found me. What do you want now?” 

“I want to stay.” It was automatic, the words falling out of Crowley’s mouth almost before Ezra had finished his question. 

“So stay,” Ezra said. He trailed his hand down Crowley’s side, felt the ridges of his ribs. “Stay.”

*********

_January, 1930_

Messrs. Crowley and Fell were something of a legend in the parts of London that were, as Mr. Crowley had once put it, less heterosexually inclined. It was a good thing, then, that they co-owned a bookshop in one such part of London, because the story of their love had traveled wide enough that the shop began to serve a dual purpose. 

The first purpose was fairly obvious. Mr. Fell was a bookseller with a nearly unparalleled ability to match a person to a book and a willingness to recite poetry on command if asked to do so, and many people who had initially stopped in for an idle browse quickly found themselves becoming patrons. The shop had a warm sort of comfort about it, and Mr. Fell could always be counted on to be kind. 

The same patrons that adored Mr. Fell on the basis of his literary knowledge were often less fond of his business partner. Mr. Crowley was a constant whirlwind of motion who wore (almost exclusively) dark clothing and walked with the aid of a cane, the handle of which was shaped like the head of a silver snake. He was easy enough to talk to, most customers found, but there was something sharp about his smile. He also tended to circle around Mr. Fell like a guard dog, scrutinizing the people who approached to ask questions. Many patrons of the shop had found Mr. Crowley’s behavior to be unsettling at first, but most decided that the benefits of Mr. Fell’s expertise and warmth outweighed the presence of his cold Canadian friend. 

The second purpose of the bookshop was known to a different kind of patron. They were usually young, hungry, and tired, and they very rarely had any money with which to buy something as frivolous as a book. They also knew something about Messrs. Crowley and Fell that the shop’s ordinary customers did not. 

These people came to the bookshop after hours, and they were not looking for either Mr. Crowley or Mr. Fell. They were looking for the Crowleys, a pair of men who lived at a bookshop called _Ezra Fell & Co. _The descriptions that they were given of the Crowleys were simple enough: one was tall, dark-haired, and used a snake-headed cane; the other was a short man, fair-skinned and pale-haired, who wore a golden band on his pinky finger. The stories about the Crowleys varied by the teller, but there was a common thread between them. 

The bookshop owned by the Crowleys was, by all accounts, the safest place in London. 

Tonight, a boy with a bruise on his cheek was crossing the street toward _Ezra Fell & Co., _praying to a God he wasn’t certain he believed in that someone would answer the door. He’d been told to knock twice, pause, and knock twice again, so he did. 

There was a shuffling sound from inside the shop, and the boy took a deep breath as the door swung open.

“Come in, come in,” said a short man with light hair, skin, and eyes. “It’s frigid out there, my dear. You’ll catch your death.” 

“Mister Crowley,” the boy said, trying to keep his teeth from chattering, “My name’s Jamie Scott, and I’m here ‘cause I heard—” 

“Tell the kid to get in here.” Another man had appeared behind Mr. Crowley, leaning on a cane. When Jamie caught his eye, he smiled. “Come in, then. We know why you’re here.” 

The first Mr. Crowley stepped aside, and Jamie crossed the threshold with unsteady steps. The door was closed behind him, locking with a click, and Jamie did his best to breathe. 

“Call me Ezra.” This was the soft-faced Mr. Crowley. “And that man by the shelves — standing in the shadows, really, darling? You can be quite dramatic, you know — is my husband, Anthony.” 

“You’re, uh.” Jamie snapped his jaw shut, swallowed. “You’re the Crowleys.” 

“Yes,” said Ezra. 

“You’re married.” 

“In all the ways that matter.” 

“Oh,” said Jamie. “Right.” 

“My love,” Ezra said, and Anthony smiled at him, “will you get Jamie some dry clothes and a blanket, please?” 

“On it, angel.” Anthony vanished between the stacks, and Ezra held a hand out to Jamie. 

After a brief moment of hesitation, Jamie took it. Ezra’s hand was solid and warm, and his jumper smelled like peppermint, and Jamie liked him. 

“You’re safe, you know,” Ezra said as he led Jamie away from the door. “This is our place, and you’re welcome to stay, if you like.” 

*********

_August, 1935_

It had been seventeen years since Passchendaele, but the nightmares had never really stopped. They were less frequent, yes, and they didn’t hurt quite so badly, but they were there. They crept up on Ezra and startled him awake, choking as he breathed in gas that wasn’t there, grabbing at his side to apply pressure to a wound that was nothing but a scar. 

Ezra knew that Crowley had them, too. Crowley’s nightmares were louder than Ezra’s — when Crowley dreamt of the war, he woke up screaming. Ezra didn’t, not anymore.

When the horrors of half a lifetime ago snuck their way into the darkness of Ezra’s sleep, he would lie still for a moment. And then he would get out of bed, cross the room in silence, and slip out of the door that opened out to the balcony. 

On those nights, Ezra’s needs were simple. He needed to look out and see walls made of brick and stone and metal instead of mud. He needed to hear the sounds of cars and voices, not the rattle of machine gun fire and the blasts of shells. He needed to feel something cold and solid beneath his feet, a ground to stand on that wasn’t pulling at boots that were no longer on his feet. So when Ezra had a nightmare, he went out to the balcony, and he let London meet his needs. He’d gone out even in the rain and in the snow, because he needed to. 

Crowley had found him there before. He didn’t always wake when Ezra left the bed, but sometimes Ezra found himself being held and whispered to by the man he loved most in the world. Ezra would let Crowley hold him for a while, and he would look and listen and feel the things that were real until he was certain that the war was behind him, until he was sure that he’d never be going back. And then he would turn in Crowley’s arms and kiss him, say his favorite three words, and he would let Crowley take him back to bed. 

This was one of those nights. 

“Hey, angel.” Crowley’s accent had changed slightly in the years since he’d left Canada. His vowels were softer, his r-sounds less noticeable. But his voice was the same, and Ezra was still deeply in love with it. “Was it people tonight?” 

Ezra managed to nod, and Crowley’s hands wrapped around his middle. 

“I’m sorry that you see them,” Crowley said. “But you’re not there anymore. There’s nothing you can do for them, you know? There was never anything you could do.” 

Crowley bent his long body forward, resting his chin on Ezra’s shoulder, and he kept talking. He reminded Ezra of good things in the world, listing things in an endless stream, and he waited. 

Eventually, Ezra placed his hands over Crowley’s and squeezed, and Crowley loosened his grip so that Ezra could turn around. 

“Thank you,” Ezra said as he stepped closer, bringing his body fully into contact with Crowley’s. “I do love you, you know. Desperately, completely.” 

“I love you, too.” 

They kissed with the familiarity that comes with years of practice. It should, by Ezra’s best estimate, have become something mundane by this point, but it hadn’t. Kissing Crowley was always a revelation, always a single pinprick of perfect time and space that was set apart from the others. So Ezra let himself sink into it, falling against steady hands and getting lost in beautiful lips until he forgot that he had ever been afraid of anything at all. 

And when Crowley pulled away and whispered, “Come to bed, angel,” Ezra followed him back into the darkness of the room. He fell back to sleep with his body draped across Crowley’s chest, knowing with utter certainty that Crowley would save him from the monsters in his dreams.

\--

_Let me not to the marriage of true minds_

_Admit impediments. Love is not love_

_Which alters when it alteration finds,_

_Or bends with the remover to remove._

_O no! it is an ever-fixed mark_

_That looks on tempests and is never shaken;_

_It is the star to every wand'ring bark,_

_Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken._

_Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks_

_Within his bending sickle's compass come;_

_Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,_

_But bears it out even to the edge of doom._

_If this be error and upon me prov'd,_

_I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd._

_(William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116)_

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out with me on [Tumblr!](https://hope-inthedark.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Also, if you would like to make any sort of creative work (art, podfic, whatever) based on this or any of my stories, consider this blanket permission to do so! I only ask that you would tag me in your work so that I can see it and share it! Thank you for being here, and thank you for reading. I hope you are having the best day!


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